The Internet OracleTM (aka The Usenet
OracleTM) is a collective effort at humor
by the denizens of the internet. Questions mailed to the Oracle are
forwarded to other Oracle users, who serve as an "incarnation" of the
Oracle by providing a witty answer to the question. The funniest and
cleverest answers are selected by the Oracular Priesthood for inclusion
in the famous Oracularities, which are posted periodically to the
newsgroup rec.humor.oracle.
Discussion of the Oracularities occurs in the newsgroup rec.humor.oracle.d. Those who do not
have access to usenet news can subscribe to the Oracularities mailing
list.

Local oracle programs have existed in various places
for many years. Most can trace their origin or influence
to Peter Langston's <psl@acm.org> seminal oracle
program which was written for the research V5 Unix system at the Harvard
Science Center in 1975-76. As part of his "psl games" distribution,
this original program spread to a number of sites, such as Murray
Hill Bell Labs, Interactive Systems and Lucasfilm. Lars Huttar <huttar@occs.oberlin.edu>
used a description of this program to write his oracle program, which
was posted to alt.sources in August 1989. This program inspired the
Usenet Oracle.

Steve Kinzler<steve@kinzler.com>,
a systems administrator and graduate student at Indiana University,
installed Huttar's program on silver.ucs.indiana.edu, where it proved
to be quite popular. The best Oracularities were posted to in.bizarre,
a group local to Indiana.

Ray Moody <moody@pittpa.cray.com>,
a graduate student at Purdue University, after correspondence with Kinzler, wrote the core software for
The Internet OracleTM, a mail-based oracle program to be
run on iuvax.cs.indiana.edu for net-wide use, where it proved to be an
immediate success. On 12 March 1996, it was renamed as The Internet
OracleTM.

The Internet OracleTM Resource Index is a humor archive
related to the omniscient net.deity "The Internet OracleTM"
(also "The Usenet OracleTM"), or more simply just "The Oracle",
"The All-knowing Oracle", and to those who know him well, "Orrie".
Here are some things that have little in common with Orrie except his
name:

The defunct Oracle Humor Service.
This was also a humor archive, but it is not to be confused with The
Internet OracleTM.